Kids are coding the future at the coding workshops organized by Garanti Bank all around Turkey
"I'm Coding the Future" coding and robotics workshops that Garanti Bank initiated in order to instill the culture of technology and creativity in kids, and to introduce them to the skills of the 21st century. Garanti welcomed about 200 children into the joyful and creative world of coding in the coding workshops it organized in 9 cities around all regions of Turkey.
The training with the theme, "Design-Oriented Thinking," to which children of 8-13 years of age attended was organized in the İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Antalya, Diyarbakır, Kayseri, Şanlıurfa, Ordu-Giresun and Elazığ.
Coding is considered to be the literacy of the future, and is identified as necessary knowledge for all the professions of the following period, Garanti aims to teach the children about the logic of coding at the workshops that cover skills such as creative thinking, innovation, leadership, responsibility, social learning methods and collaborative working, that come to focus in the 21st century.
A group of participants in the coding and robotics workshops of Garanti Bank. - Garanti Bank
The children who attended the "I'm Coding the Future" with the education support of Bahçeşehir High School, coding workshop were thought the Scratch software development platform and programming language.
Then, the children were provided with basic robotics and mechanisms training, and asked to build a Milo vehicle using LEGO's WeDo 2.0 kit, and write the code to run it. In the second part of the training, the children were taught about the "Design-Oriented Thinking Presentation and Project Development" approach.
The workshop was concluded with the project presentations of the children who worked in groups. The children participated in the workshops with much interest and enthusiasm. Meanwhile, Bahçeşehir High School scholars offered trainings about "raising children in the digital age" and "intra-familial communication" to their parents.
Didem Dinçer Başer, Executive Vice President of Garanti Bank, who commented on the event, said "As Garanti Bank, we always aim to undertake pioneering and innovative works. Education is one of the areas that our bank is considering very important, and has been contributing for many years in line with its approach of creating value for the society.
The prioritization analyses in our social studies indicate the same necessity. In that regard, we support the new generation with activities that aim to provide them with skills and competencies of the 21st century. It is important for the Generation-Z, who are born into the technological environment of our day, to learn the basic principles of programming languages, and acquire the "Design-Oriented Thinking" skill at an early age, in order to allow a well-equipped generation to emerge.
In today's world, where digital literacy is rapidly rising, we believe that coding has to be a fundamental part of education, and that our kids can only compete in the world if they acquire these types of skills. We could take our "I'm Coding the Future" coding workshops that we initiated in stages last year in different cities to another level by organizing simultaneous workshops in 9 cities.
We are very happy to have contributed to our children's preparation for the future. The surveys we conducted through the comments of the participating families before and after these workshops are guiding us towards the future in creating a permanent value. Our goal is to ensure that the new generation acquires the coding knowledge through in-depth trainings, to contribute to their journey towards a visionary and creative future, and to demonstrate these acquirements through our social impact analyses..."